The new expansion will fully replace the Japonica Street location that was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina, and address the LA/SPCA’s growth since 2005, not only restoring the facilities and capacity that were lost, but also adding a permanent veterinary clinic, education spaces, administrative offices and a new adoption wing.

“Space is our biggest limitation in expanding the impact of our life saving programs and services. This replacement of Japonica St. and expansion of services will launch the LA/SPCA into the next 125 years,” said Ana Zorilla, CEO of LA/SPCA. “We are proud to implement best practices and this construction will deliver the most comprehensive facility in the state. Today’s event launches a state-of-the-art facility, designed for maximum energy efficiency.”

The new facility will have four main functions. It will feature a state-of-the-art adoption wing to showcase adoptable cats and dogs and increase the number of animals going to permanent homes. The LA/SPCA estimates that this could increase adoption rates by 30 percent. The new education wing will be able to host twice the number of humane education programs, with specifically targeted classes for youth. The expansion of the administration space also will provide much-needed support space for offices and storage for supplies used for hurricane evacuations and disaster response.

“I love that we have spent time planning for a facility that will be energy-efficient and have enough generator capacity to support the operations when we have power losses,” Zorilla said. “We learned in Isaac last year that our first building is not safe for housing animals without power as the temperature rises quickly.”

Finally, and most importantly, it will allow the veterinary clinic to triple the number of sterilization surgeries done each day and provide an expanded wellness program so more low income pet owners can provide vaccinations and micro-chipping for their pets. This will increase their veterinary clinic’s capacity by 40 percent to 50 percent.

In the last year alone, the clinic performed more than 9,000 sterilizations in New Orleans. It offer many services to address overpopulation, including trap-neuter-return program for feral cats. Several more pilot programs are in the works for when Phase II is complete.

“Our focus has evolved from primarily working on sheltering and adopting animals to preventing the overpopulation issue all together through spay/neuter,” Zorilla said. “Since 2007, when we reopened our temporary community veterinary clinic, we have sterilized over 30,000 animals in Southeast Louisiana, preventing 231,280 unwanted dogs from being born and 312,228 unwanted cats from being born.”

The LA/SPCA broke ground on the first phase of the Dorothy Dorsett Brown Animal Rescue and Care Center, located at 1700 Mardi Gras Blvd. in Algiers, seven years ago to partially replace the animal housing that was lost during Katrina.

Ellen Kempner, who is on the Board of Directors of the LA/SPCA, said that the extensive negotiations they went through with FEMA after Katrina are part of the reason it has taken them so long to reach Phase II of the rebuilding efforts.

“FEMA originally wanted to give us a very low amount of funding to replace our original facility that was lost during Katrina,” Kempner said. “It seemed like every time we got close to making progress with them, a new team would come in. So, as you can imagine, this is a highly anticipated day for us and we are very excited.”

Though the negotiations have taken several years, nearly half of the project budget is now being funded by FEMA. Additionally, LA/SPCA’s Capital Campaign Committee, led by co-chairs Susan Hess and Jackie Shreves, has secured roughly 80 percent of the funding needed to complete Phase II. The organization is working hard to ensure the campaign is successful with 100 percent of the funding in hand by the end of construction next year.

Loretta Lambert, director of LA/SPCA’s community clinic, was a first responder during Katrina and looks forward to expanding her community clinic project during Phase II.

“After Katrina hit, we reorganized and basically re-launched, and now we have a very large focus on the community clinic,” Lambert said. “We consider the services performed at the clinic to have a direct correlation with keeping animals from ending up in the shelters, through attention to health and identification, and if we are doing our job right we see the results in adoptions.”

Lambert and other LA/SPCA first-responders are responsible for the largest animal rescue operation and temporary shelter in U.S. history. Before Katrina made landfall, 263 animals were evacuated from the Japonica Street shelter and, with the aid of partner groups from around the country, more than 8,500 animals were rescued in the first two months and 7,000 more by the end of Oct. 2005.

“For months afterwards, we worked on reuniting lost pets with their owners and re-homing those whose owners could not be located. Amidst the chaos, emerged one of the most enduring of bonds – the human-animal bond. We needed them as much as they needed us,” Zorilla said.